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Software heavyweights have pushed back at the “complete fallacy” that firms are willing and able to use only one provider, but accountants on the ground aren’t convinced some of the larger providers can effectively integrate with each other.
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Tech bosses knock back ‘complete fallacy’
17 October 2017
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In line with feedback from accountants at the Australian Technology Showcase Australia in Sydney, managing director for accountants group at Reckon Australia, Sam Allert, said the notion of one practice, one software is a “complete fallacy” and out of step with how the industry works.
“Our view is to give accountants the ability to data mine multiple technologies. We normalise the data, so we get over the issue of being able to interpret it,” Mr Allert told Accountants Daily.
“You can only leverage data if it’s all in the same form. So e.g. if a client in an accounting practice went and put all their clients on Reckon One, the data would be in the same format. We don’t believe that is ever going to happen, unlike some of our competitors,” he said.
MYOB’s is developing its software with an understanding that accountants will be using multiple providers, MYOB chief executive Tim Reed told Accountants Daily.
“Of course, it will be more efficient if they are all on one platform. But we are not taking the perspective of locking every part of the practice into our platform,” Mr Reed said.
Recent research from Smithink found that integration across multiple suppliers is one of the "number one wishes" of accountants, and has been for the last six years.
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Accountants like Skeggs Goldstien director Adam Goldstien, have found that it’s historically difficult to have multiple software providers integrate with each other, particularly with the larger end of the market.
He’s confident that consolidating will become simpler in the coming years given the pace of development in the accounting technology space, but has found it’s still necessary to have multiple platforms to supplement the weaknesses of one provider with the strength of another.
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